Facebook has now explained in a detailed blog post what caused the outage - and why it took so long to fix.

It comes as former Facebook product manager and data scientist Frances Haugen testifies before a Senate subcommittee about the company’s research into Instagram’s effect on the mental health of young users.

Why did Facebook, Instagram and WhatsApp go down?

‘We are digitally addicted’: Big tech expert advises how we should view Facebook’s mass outage

Facebook stock nosedive costs Zuckberg $6bn as whistleblower interview and service outage rattle investors


In June and April this year, the social media giant’s platforms unexpectedly went down due to a “network configuration issue”.


KEY POINTS
Facebook outages can hit other services
A Facebook whistleblower is currently testifying in the US Senate
The outage was caused by changes to Facebook’s routers, which also stopped the company’s communication efforts

Facebook explains outage - and why it took so long to fix
Facebook has now given its most detailed explanation yet of what caused Monday’s major outage, and why it took so long to get the company’s essential systems back online.

Single wrong command took down Facebook’s ‘backbone’, says company
The outage on WhatsApp, Instagram and Facebook occurred because of a wrong command issued during a ‘routine maintenance job’

Former Labor Secretary says lawmakers should act against Facebook
Robert Reich took to Twitter to urge US politicians to act over the social media giant following testimony from whistle blower Frances Haugen.

“Haugen’s courageous testimony and yesterday’s outage confirm what we already knew: Facebook has amassed far too much power over our communications, our democracy, and our day-to-day lives — and the consequences, as we’ve seen, are dire....